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With less than three weeks to go until the big C-day, we’re spending every free minute thinking about gifts – who we need to buy for, how much to spend, and what’s going to keep us in their good books until next year.

It can be difficult to buy for the ‘person who has everything’ and sometimes you just want to get something a little bit different for a loved one.

Relaxation gifts can be an ideal present, whatever your budget; gifting presents that aren’t something they need, but something even they never knew they wanted.

Here are a few of our favourite ideas to help you out, and help a person in your life relax this Christmas:

For the ‘creative’ one

If you’ve got someone arty in your life, we’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves. Try something that lets them chill out, whilst enjoying and improving their own arts and crafts skills. Maybe a sewing kit or adult

Christmas is hectic, but try to enjoy the festivities and stress a little bit less this year.

There’s a lot going on at this time of year. Last-minute panic buying of presents and organising a huge Christmas dinner for a party of 30 (including your aunt’s new boyfriend, their dog and your sister’s neighbour).

Then there’s second-guessing the dress code for the impending work-do, taking the morning off work to see Billy’s nativity play, all while trying to inhale a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine – that you don’t even really like, only doing it to show willing.

It’s enough to cause you to burnout, if not give you a serious headache.

But, we’ve come up with some simple ways to help you keep calm and as stress-free as humanly possible, this festive season.

Plan

As the old saying goes, ‘fail to plan, plan to fail’. Plan your time, plan your presents, plan your shopping. Know exactly what you need to buy, who you need to buy for – and when you’ll need it...

This time of year is when we’re most prone to coughs and colds. Try our top tips for powering through, and easing those cold symptoms at work.

In some working environments, you are required to stay away from work if you are experiencing cold or flu-like symptoms. But, in most jobs, the decision as to whether we are well enough to go to work is left in our own hands.

Sometimes, due to our busy lives and the pressures of business, we carry on as normal and work through – even when you’re feeling really sorry for yourself.

If you’re at home, caring for your cold can be easy – you can stay in bed with a hot water bottle, or tuck yourself up on the sofa in front of the TV. But, at work, it gets a little tricky when you are sneezing over your keyboard every 30 seconds, or coughing through every conversation with your co-workers.

So, what are the best ways to deal with that cold, and keep your spirits up for the working day?

Keep hydrated

Be sure to keep drinking throughout the day. Whether that means sticking to your normal quantities if you already...

There are many benefits to exercising your mind. We’ve come up with a few weird (yet wonderful) ways to help you stretch your mental capabilities.

We’re always told how important it is to resist the urge to be a couch potato. We’re told to be active, as it will help in most other areas of our health and well-being. Exercise reconnects you with your body, what your body is capable of, and how far you can push it.

But it’s also important to exercise your mind. From boosting your mental capacity to improving your memory, and even exploring parts of your brain that you don’t often use – it’s good to test our mental capabilities.

Try a couple of these wonderfully weird ideas to help you get in touch with your mind and start to use your brain more like a muscle.

Brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand

And that includes squeezing the toothpaste tube and turning the tap on and off too. You more than likely use your dominant hand for more or less every simple activity, like brushing your teeth. But try using your other hand, and notice how unusual it...

We’re not quite sure where the year is going, but November has raised it’s chilly head and we’re really starting to feel the colder weather beginning to set in (brrr). With a particularly cold winter forecast for the UK this year, it’s about time to brace ourselves.

If you’re struggling with the shorter days and longer nights, there are lots of ways to help you keep those winter blues at bay. We’ve compiled a selection of tips and tricks to help you feel brighter – even when it seems dark and gloomy outside.

Put lights on earlier

You’d be surprised at how much difference it can make. Don’t wait until it’s dark and you have to flick the switch, do it before...

It’s natural to get the Sunday night blues occasionally, but try these tips to make it only once in a blue moon, rather than once a week.

You know exactly the time and day – that certain point on a Sunday afternoon/evening, when the thought of Monday morning comes crashing down on you like a tonne of bricks. You find yourself wondering if this is how Sundays for the rest of your life are going to be – and whether you can get away with pulling a sicky in the morning. But why is it that we get the Sunday blues?

Even after the best of weekends (or especially after the best weekends), there’s a grey cloud that emerges as we all realise that real life is about to regain control, and we have to start being responsible again.

But the end of the weekend doesn’t have to be the end of the fun. Give yourself a reason to look forward to the week, rather than dread it. Perhaps schedule a lunch date with a work friend on Monday to talk about the weekend, or go to the cinema one night after work to ease your way through the rest of the week. If every weekday is a string of wake up – go to work...

Losing someone you love is a very painful experience. Hypnotherapy Directory team member Becky shares some ways that have helped her to cope with grief.

Grief is a strange beast – it affects no two people in exactly the same way. Sometimes I’ve found myself wondering if I’ve been grieving in the ‘right’ way. But, is there anyone that can actually tell me otherwise? I don’t think so – it’s a personal and individual process and, as I’ve found, I don’t have a consistent way of grieving myself anyway.

Of course, each time you grieve will be different. Your relationship to each person will be different, you’ll be at different points in your life, and you may be surrounded by different people in your life. Sometimes you may cope better than you expect to, and other times you may be hit hard and wonder if you’ll ever feel normal again.

I don’t think there’s a particular process I go through, but I guess if you asked me my best ways to cope, – or to start the healing process – there are a few things that I do which have worked well for me.

Maintaining self-care and promoting a positive outlook on life is very important in the wellness journey.

But what steps can we take to achieve this? We ask hypnotherapist, counsellor and Hypnotherapy Directory member, Emily Hughes her thoughts.

Can you tell us your thoughts on the importance of self-care, how you achieved balance personally and how hypnotherapy can help achieve this?

“Effective hypnotherapy can do wonders for encouraging self-care and establishing a positive outlook on life, which is something I have experienced myself.

Having hypnotherapy helped me realise a lot of this was because of low self-esteem, and that if I was to work on this, I would have a much better relationship with myself and a much more positive outlook on life.

The more hypnotherapy helped my self-esteem grow, the more I wanted to introduce new things that nurtured me and encouraged self-care. This hugely...

For some people, Halloween, and the ghostly characters and events that accompany it, can become a tense time of year. It can sometimes be easy to forget that, despite the fun-filled holiday, there are often real fears associated with Halloween.

Whether you’re a parent with an anxious child, or you find yourself unnerved, there’s some simple ideas to help get yourself through the holiday without any scares.

Whilst some children are thrilled with the prospect of putting on a mask and dressing up for the occasion, the idea can be stressful for others. In particular, if you have a child who doesn’t cope well with surprises or can display disruptive behaviour, the evening has the potential to get a little off-track.

If dressing-up is a necessity,try costumes which don’t cover the face or neck

Have you ever wondered what a day in the life of a hypnotherapist really looks like? We ask hypnotherapist and Hypnotherapy Directory member, John Mckenzie to share his story.

“One of the aspects I enjoy most about my job as a hypnotherapist is that there isn’t really such a thing as an ‘average day’. That’s actually one of the things that appealed to me about starting work as a hypnotherapist. After a career in the civil service and the NHS, I wanted to do something different and to work with individuals again.

That’s one of the reasons I chose to retrain as a hypnotherapist, to work with individuals and also to be able to help them make rapid and permanent changes in their lives.

Sometimes it’s seeing people become free of fears or habits that they thought would always be with them. Sometimes it’s helping people to develop new ways of thinking or behaving in order to achieve things they never thought...